


50 Sentences (Spy/Engineer)

by renquise



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: 50 Sentences, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-03
Updated: 2010-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The arrival of a new team member always shakes up things a little, jostling everyone out of their comfortable patterns and, if only for that, Spy’s glad to see a short, stocky man stepping into the locker room with a tip of his hardhat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	50 Sentences (Spy/Engineer)

1\. Comfort  
The arrival of a new team member always shakes up things a little, jostling everyone out of their comfortable patterns and, if only for that, Spy’s glad to see a short, stocky man stepping into the locker room with a tip of his hardhat.

2\. Kiss  
“Ah, back home, it’s four,” Spy says with a smirk, shrugging as Engineer gapes at him, a hand over his cheek.

3\. Soft  
It’s easy to peg their new engineer for a gentle-voiced intellectual, though Spy is quickly disabused of that notion as his machine cuts down a tide of incoming REDs, the deafening clatter underlaid with a chuckle.

4\. Pain  
In the middle of the action, it’s pretty easy to brush off the sting of respawn to go and pursue some dominating bastard, but Engineer’s still grateful for Spy’s offhanded concern as he comes out of respawn, aloof and disconnected as it is.

5\. Potatoes  
“A walking bag of spuds. Y’ know, the bad part is that I can’t tell if yer jokin’ or not,” Engineer says as Spy smiles and says that it’s his business to know things.

6\. Rain  
Engineer can’t hold back a grin, even as he tugs the sleeve of Spy’s sodden suit to join him under the awning—Spy really does an uncanny impression of a wet cat when he gets caught in the rain.

7\. Chocolate  
“Used to drink gallons of the stuff when I was a kid. I did get that dang Captain Midnight pin, though,” Engineer says, wincing at the Ovaltine commercials that come on their little tv set and jerking a snorting laugh out of Spy.

8\. Happiness  
Honestly, all he needs are his machines, and he’s good—though Spy’s presence in his workshop isn’t precisely unwelcome.

9\. Telephone  
Spy often finds himself leaning against the wall by the phone room, cloaked, listening to the warm, fond sound of Engineer’s voice (the dips and drawn-out vowels, the rough consonants and twang)—strictly in order to impersonate him as necessary, of course.

10\. Ears  
He’s never been all too handy at languages, and it all sounds the same to him, whether Spy’s speaking Italian, French, or whatever other fancy-pants language he knows, but Engineer does like hearing it, all the same.

11\. Name  
For such a functional title, “Engineer” seems to convey so much more than blueprints and metal.

12\. Sensual  
Engineer puts two more shots through the RED Heavy’s leg, but he’s still coming, and his gun is already spinning up, and dammit, dammit, he has to reload—and Spy appears behind the RED’s bulk with one, two smooth strokes, twisting his knife out in an arc of blood, and all Engineer can do is stare.

13\. Death  
Spy leans against the lockers for a moment as he switches his cloaking watch, blocking out the residual flashes of fire consuming his skin to a crisp and wondering why he would do something as idiotic as ignoring a Pyro at his back to take out a Heavy—Engineer’s presence had nothing to do with it, of course.

14\. Sex  
“A set of triplets with magnificent bosoms and their equally good-lookin’ mother. Really,” Engineer says sceptically, and takes another drink from his bottle—he’s probably going to need it—as Spy smirks and continues the story with appropriate hand motions.

15\. Touch  
Spy doesn’t often take his gloves off—it’s a habit, like the mask—but he can’t help but savour the gentle surprise of textures under his fingers when he does: the fine weave of a suit, the slight tackiness of drying blood, the smooth surface of a dispenser, the rougher weave of overalls.

16\. Weakness  
Engineer ignores the ache in his bum knee and notes the way that the line of Spy’s suit sits more stiffly across his shoulders when the clouds roll in, old injuries flaring up with the wet weather.

17\. Tears  
Engineer always looks surprised when he sees Spy taking a needle and thread to the rends in his suit, but Spy simply meets his stare with a shrug—it takes work to look this good, after all.

18\. Wind  
Spy is always there one second and gone the next, a flash of blue by Engineer’s shoulder and sometimes a quick murmur: RED Demo incoming, watch your back, your fly is down, mon dieu Engineer you are so gullible, but really, Demo on your right flank.

19\. Speed  
Time passes quickly on base, measured out in increments of chaos and stillness by the Administrator’s shrill voice, and anchored by Engineer’s steady presence.

20\. Freedom  
There’s a strange kind of liberty on the battlefield, and things that would be strange anywhere else seem completely normal here—hoedowns over enemy corpses, for instance, especially when Spy loosens up enough to join in.

21\. Life  
Still, it isn’t a bad sort of life.

22\. Jealousy  
“You must have some little lady waiting for you back home—someone to make pies for you and bear you a few dozen nauseatingly adorable little brats,” Spy says, exhaling a stream of smoke, and Engineer shrugs, turning back to his sentry.

23\. Hands  
Spy likes the calm confidence of Engineer’s fingers when he fixes things, easy and precise.

24\. Taste  
Engineer takes Spy’s hand to buckle his repaired watch back on, and all of a sudden, he’s so very conscious of the thin skin on the inside of Spy’s wrist, Spy’s sharp breath, and a silence so thick and pressing Engineer can almost taste it at the back of his throat.

25\. Devotion  
Upon reflection, it’s thoroughly useless to investigate whether Engineer has someone back at home; the man’s married to science, after all.

26\. Forever  
Spy has the habit of asking him the strangest gosh-darned questions, sometimes—do you think you could do this for the rest of your life, what would you do if the war were to stop—and Engineer doesn’t have any answers.

27\. Blood  
“You are getting blood on my pants, you realize. I expect you to wash it out, of course, by hand, not with your horrid machine that shrunk Heavy’s uniform. Worsted wool requires a careful hand—merde, Engineer, stay lucid,” Spy says tightly, clamping his hand against the slow, hot gush from Engineer’s leg and ignoring Engineer’s slurred “Yer babblin’, Spy.”

28\. Sickness  
“See, wadin’ through the sewers, that’s a-okay, but hidin’ down there for hours on end just to catch the BLU Engineer off his guard? That’s just plain dense,” Engineer says, handing Spy another handkerchief and ignoring Spy’s glare above the edge of the blanket.

29\. Melody  
When Engineer hands over his guitar, he’s surprised to hear a quick, gypsy-flavoured riff roll off of Spy’s long fingers, though Spy pulls back, rubbing his fingers together and muttering that he lost those calluses a long time ago.

30\. Star  
It’s decidedly frightening to realize that he finds Engineer’s ramblings about giant balls of gas far more romantic than any overblown similes.

31\. Home  
“Good god, it’s a good thing I don’t have a wife back home, or I reckon she’d be jealous of these little star-gazin’ dates,” Engineer says, rolling his bottle between his hands.

32\. Confusion  
“Ah—I thought—the woman you speak to on the phone?” Spy says, fumbling his cigarette when Engineer gives him an odd look and asks why he’s interested in his sister.

33\. Fear  
There’s something utterly ridiculous in being able to face down a faceless creature with a flamethrower, but having his gut twist as he tugs at Engineer’s collar and leans in.

34\. Lightning/Thunder  
Engineer can remember a girl back in high school, a cheerleader who had struck his heart from the first toss of her bright ringlets, making him blush behind his thick glasses and bury his head in equations to distract himself from the swing of her hips; but that echo seems to pale to the shock of want in his belly when he meets Spy’s lips.

35\. Bonds  
“What now?” Engineer asks, and Spy doesn’t know—an unfamiliar feeling, when he’s employed to think ahead and to know everything—but he finds himself willing to try.

36\. Market  
In the end, it’s much the same, only Engineer feels inclined to repay Spy’s wisecracks with both a roll of his eyes and a kiss.

37\. Technology  
“You probably know enough to fix it yerself, by now,” Engineer says, hunched over the guts of his watch; “Perhaps,” Spy responds absently, watching Engineer’s fingers moving over the delicate circuitry.

38\. Gift  
Spy maintains that rigging Engineer’s tool cabinet to dismantle itself was a terribly witty present.

39\. Smile  
“You’d better wipe that smug grin off your face, mister, or by god, I will.”

40\. Innocence  
In retrospect, it was perhaps a mistake to underestimate Engineer’s creativity, not to mention his ability with knots.

41\. Completion  
The war trails off, eventually, the battles slow and infrequent, and Engineer feels a strange twilight in the air, an end, a beginning.

42\. Clouds  
When Spy asks Engineer what he’s going to do with his salary once he’s done, Engineer hums thoughtfully, sketching out a little ranch under a cloudless blue sky, a few chickens, a barn for his projects—Spy thinks of his own Swiss bank account, and wonders.

43\. Sky  
There’s a wide open sky in the last weeks, the sort Engineer loves.

44\. Heaven  
Spy doesn’t think much of the prospect of an afterlife (even if he did, he wouldn’t be headed anywhere especially pleasant), but he finds himself clinging to these last moments, this small eternity of skin on skin.

45\. Hell  
Kissing Spy into the mattress, Engineer gets a flash of the minister of his church, a cantankerous type with a penchant towards fire and brimstone, but he pushes that out of his mind with a sweep of his lips up the angle of Spy’s jaw—he’s never been the prayin’ type, anyways.

46\. Sun  
Once they leave, it eventually stops being strange to wake up without Engineer at his side.

47\. Moon  
The footage of the last moon landing is just as thrilling as the first, but Engineer can’t help but miss the shouting and the shoving when they’d crowded around their tiny TV set: Scout leaping up and adjusting the ears when the broadcast became filled with static, Soldier alternately rhapsodizing about American ingenuity and claiming it was all a hoax, and Spy sitting beside him, the tips of his fingers touching Engineer’s knee.

48\. Waves  
Europe is pleasant enough, with good food, charming women, and the occasional assassination plot or secret Nazi enclave, but Spy soon finds himself without an anchor, floating through Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Algeria, Russia, Scotland, Australia—he loses track, eventually—until he washes up on the gravel road of a small ranch.

49\. Hair  
“You’re startin’ to thin a bit there,” Engineer remarks one morning as he puts the coffee on, and Spy snorts and refrains from making a comment about walkers, even if Engineer’s bad leg is acting up today.

50\. Supernova  
Engineer once saw an atomic explosion.

(In Las Vegas, way back in university. He’d gone with a few buddies to see if they could count cards at the blackjack tables and ride out rich to pay off their student loans, but they all knew that they were really there for the bomb. The marvel of modern science. He can still remember the shockwave, the brilliant flash, the wave of heat, and the unholy shaking under his feet. He remembers thinking—this, this is what they can do.

As Spy’s hand covers his, the boards of the back porch creaking under the shift of his rocking chair, he thinks that this is what they are meant to do.)


End file.
